the impossibility of christ
Thursday, 14 August 2008
I have been reading Postmodern Philosophy & Christian Thought, which is a collection of essays, from an assortment of authors, describing the topic which should be obvious from the title. I haven’t decided how much I like the book yet. I haven’t gotten through the first division which is labeled “Placing Postmodernism.” I’m hoping the other divisions, theological issues and ethical & social issues, will be more engaging.
The essay, “Is the Postmodern Post-Secular?” looks at how the religious is irreverently portrayed in postmodern literature, specifically in the works The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon and White Noise by Don DeLillo. The author’s main thesis is that just because postmodern thought is against modernism and the secularization which associated with it, it still holds onto the Nietzschian anti-religious sentiments (and far and above anti-Christian) which are still grounded in modernism.
Apparently as much as postmodern literature has turned its back on the Enlightenment’s faith in Reason is still holds onto the it’s antagonism towards faith in the unseen religious. I haven’t read either of the works focused on but from his analysis i have gathered that he argues that both authors deny the possibility of a postmodern Faith. It seems that both works have a lot focus upon death and one’s denial of one’s looming mortality. This theme of death is a central theme for much of, at least in early, postmodern-continental philosophy. After claiming God is dead, we must realize that our death is our end, so we must make the most of our life because their is nothing more.
But I’m just rambling, what I wanted to get at was that because death is our end, and there being no way to get around it, it makes Christ’s story of breaking the chains of death impossible. Derrida is quoted from his work The Gift of Death:
“I can die for the other in a situation where my death gives him a little longer to live…But I cannot die in her place, I cannot give her my life in exchange for her death. Only a mortal can die..and that mortal can only give to what is mortal since he can give everything except immortality, everything except salvation as immortality.”
It seems so powerful that so much of postmodern thought is founded upon our finitude ending in death, and the Christian faith is based upon breaking that exact limitation. The typical existential character is filled with worry, angst, disconnection from the community, loneliness, etc. These are all the things which Christ promises to break us from. Christ’s message seems so liberating in comparison!
I’m really very positive and open to much of the postmodern philosophical thought, but I can’t help but stop and examine the blanet contrast between stories. It seems like the Christian story was written as a response to these philosophies of death. My father would say it is due to my rebellious spirit, but I like the idea that the story of Christ is in stark opposition to the postmodern story. Just that contrast, at least for me, seems to put a simple mark of justification or creditial for faith in the impossible.
No. 1 — August 18th, 2008 at 10:19 am
[...] My friend Jnthn has a great post today about postmodern philosophy and Christiantiy. [...]
No. 2 — October 20th, 2008 at 7:05 pm
[...] public links >> postmodern the impossibility of christ First saved by xXxn1kk1xXx | 1 days ago This Postmodern Life First saved by aghague | 4 days [...]
No. 3 — January 12th, 2009 at 12:56 am
Just posted this on your old blog then found out you move
I strongly disagree about the nature of DeDillo’s White Noise. It very much seems to muddle and complicate the main characters personal belief: “All plots move deathward. This is the very nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot.” That view is definitely annihilationist centric. But another view emerges, a stronger, more logical view:
“If death can be seen as less strange and unreferenced, your sense of self in relation to death will diminish, and so will fear.”
“What do I do take make death less strange? How do I go about it?”
“I don’t know. I wish I knew.”
That is DeLillo’s focus: the strangeness of death. Or the grand narrative that won’t deconstruct: death. Death is an unexperienced reality that has been inflicted on but that no one can testify to. Of course, we all buy into it’s truth. But the postmodern philosophy would mock us for doing so.
The Christian narratives says that you don’t need to act scared of death followed by a varying degree of syllogisms. But we still have no idea what the step to death will be like.
The postmodern view of death should be considered helpful by Christian because it presses the logic of pure empiricists and begs them to comment on what they can’t comment on. Logic goes far but it doesn’t say about the after life. Logic goes far within the scope of eighty years some odd years. How will it work after that?